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Audio Crackling Caused by DPC Latency - Attributed to Symantec Endpoint Protection

For several months I've been wrestling with a recurring audio problem with my Dell XPS 410 desktop computer. It's not a new computer, but still seems to have hardware specs which would tend to support full screen streaming video in HD (specifically YouTube videos) without any problems...2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E6600, 4GB DDR2 RAM, two 250GB SATA drives in a RAID 0, NVidia GForce 8600 GTS 256MB video card, etc.  The PC originally came with Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate installed.  I recently (finally) upgraded it to Windows 7 Ultimate. I needed to upgrade when I purchased Win7 a couple of years ago, but just never made the time to do it.  I have to confess that my motivation to upgrade was pretty low based on how infrequently I use this particular computer, but the need to solve this nagging audio crackling problem finally pushed me to follow through with it. 

The audio problem manifests itself in a popping and crackling sort of way.  Almost like you’re trying to play audio off a drive that’s not capable of keeping up with the demands or from a drive which is being over-burdened…kind of like skipping, but with more of a defined crackle to it.  It’s most noticeable when playing full screen high quality video (HD) both when streaming online content and when playing local videos (such as GoPro videos).  Generally speaking the video keeps up and doesn’t exhibit any problems, but the associated audio crackles enough to drive me mad. 

I tried everything I could think of. I started simple and went from there.  Defrag? Check.  Update drivers? Check.  Update BIOS and Firmware across the board?  Check.  Uninstall unnecessary software and hardware? Check.   Run Performance Monitor on drives, CPU, Memory, video, etc.? Check.  Run Dell diagnostics? Check.  Nothing seemed to matter.  Disable browser plugins?  Check.  Research and adjust settings on everything I could think of (Flash player, browser, OS, you name it)? Check.  Still no love. 

Then I stumbled upon a utility called DPC Latency Checker.  DPC latency?  What the heck is that?  Come to think of it, what’s DPC?  I did more research. 

DPC stands for Deferred Procedure Call.  In short, it’s a Windows operating system mechanism which allows hardware drivers’ high priority tasks to be performed while deferring lower priority tasks to a later time.  There are plenty of sources on the Interwebs to learn more about DPC…I’m certainly not the person to explain it.  Which brings us to DPC latency. 

DPC latency is basically when a device driver takes longer than normal to process a task.  This can cause other drivers to be delayed in their processing, often resulting it problems with audio streams.  Yes, audio.  Normally this manifests itself as pops and clicks.  Hmm…sounds familiar. OK, so I know what DPC and DPC latency are.  Now what?

Running DPC Latency Checker

If you’re still reading this, you will have no problem finding DPC Latency Checking online using your favorite search site.  Download it and run it.  You’ll see a graphical representation (bar graph style) showing green (good), yellow (borderline), and red (bad).  I saw red (humming a 90’s era ballad by hair-band Warrant).  While I didn’t think to take a screen shot of my actual results, the image below is a spitting image of what I saw each time I opened a browser (Chrome or IE) while DPC Latency Checker was running.

Once DPC Latency Checker displayed that I was having a problem I was able to see spikes when I would launch a browser (especially Chrome) or navigate between sites.  I initially followed the guidance offered by the Checker and began disabling hardware devices (using the Windows Device Manager) with very little in the way of positive results.  (As a side note, be sure not to accidentally disable your USB mouse during this process…makes navigation a bit problematic. )

After disabling several devices with no improvement to my audio problem (or to the display on the Checker), I started to focus more attention on the fact that opening a browser window seemed to cause spikes and exacerbate the audio crackling problems.  Plugins?  Settings?  Malware?  Nope, none of those.  I updated plugins, removed plugins, adjusted browser settings…no change.  

Finally I saw a tip on another site indicating that DPC Latency spikes had been attributed to Norton Internet Security software.  I don’t run NIS, but I was running a similar product from the same vendor…Symantec Endpoint Protection.  I get free use of SEP on my home computers through my employer, so I have used it on and off for several years.  Could it be causing my DPC latency and my audio problems?  I disabled Symantec’s Realtime Protection, but that didn’t change anything.  So I took the plunge and uninstalled it entirely.  Initially there was still no change, but after a reboot my DPC latency was down to a very acceptable level.  DPC Latency Checker showed green with an occasional spike into the yellow, but no red.  And the audio crackling problem was gone.  After months and months of frustration, it turns out Symantec Endpoint Protection was causing my problems. 

Now, back to full screen Youtube videos.

Noticed that Chrome seemed a little slow...

I just got a new update to Chrome (Version 31.0.1650.63 m) and noticed that it seems to slow down when going to some pages.  Almost like it would hang. By the way I do the majority of my Chrome browsing in 'Incognito' mode.

So after some research, I found that it might be a Privacy setting in Chrome.  Previously I had "Predict network actions to improve page load performance" checked.  I unchecked the setting that is circled very precisely in red in the screen shot below, and then closed all Chrome windows and reopened Chrome.  To perform a test, I typed bing in the address bar and hit CTRL+ENTER (cool shortcut to add the "www" and the ".com" to whatever is typed in the address bar).
















Like magic it was back to the fast browsing I enjoy with Chrome.

Hope it helps you guys out.  Run wild, be free!

Backing up crucial files

I have a few friends that I help out with computer related issues and the most common issue I seem to help them with is recovering lost information.  

Here are a couple of items to consider when choosing a back up plan.

• How much data is absolutely crucial? Megabytes or Gigabytes? 

• Back up to an HD (internal or external) or the Cloud? 

• Is the backed up data encrypted?

• Is the back up scheduled?

• Does the back up work for both Mac and Windows platforms?

• Is there an app for your back up?

I use a product called Mozy. It meets all my needs.

If you only have a few Gig or less of crucial info to back up, there are a couple of free apps that you can download. You can get two Gigabyte free to use for ever.

If you have more than a few gig of data you want to back up, you can then decide if you want to upgrade to one of their paid plans.  Like anything else, the more you want to back up, the more it will cost regardless of vendors.  Mozy also offers business/enterprise solutions if you happen to need that functionality as well.

Here is some info directly from Mozy's site.

If you're looking to keep your online data safe and secure, Mozy is the right choice for you. Not only has the entire Mozy business completed a SOC 1 SSAE 16 Type 2 audit and received ISO 27001 certification, but Mozy's online backup product also uses rock solid file encryption to ensure your information is secure on your computer, during transit and in our data centers.

 As soon as you select a file for backup, Mozy encrypts the file right on your laptop, desktop or server to giving you immediate protection with the same encryption standard used by the military (256-bit AES encryption.) Files are transferred to Mozy data centers through an SSL-encrypted tunnel, ensuring that your files are doubly encrypted during transit. This is the same technology used by banks to ensure safe delivery of information online.

With multiple data centers across the world, you can be sure that your data is stored in a remote location in the right place for you, ready to be restored if and when they're needed. Files at rest in the data center also reside in an encrypted state, meaning that your important information has never been safer. With a secondary copy of your data remotely stored and encrypted, you have complete protection in case anything happens to your computer or laptop.

 Mozy customers also have the choice to let Mozy manage the encryption process for them (activating a 448-bit Blowfish encryption key) or you can manage your own key using military-grade 256-bit AES to secure your data during storage.

Regardless of how you choose to manage your information, Mozy has your back when it comes to encryption and security.

Give it a shot and try MozyHome for free. Once you get to their site you see a log in box, just below the log in box is a link. It will say "Don't have an account? Sign up now."  Click on the "Sign up now" link to register for your free trial.



Speaking of free,  try an Amazon Prime membership for free as well. Free two-day shipping on millions of items, unlimited instant streaming of 41,000+ movies and TV episodes, and over 350,000 Kindle titles to borrow for free.  Not a bad deal!

an entertaining Out of Office reply...

I had sent a friend an email and got his Out of Office reply and it was too funny not to share.

I am currently out of the office due to furlough; A sequestration driven, mandatory, unpaid, non-punative vacation, and will return on July 30th.

Hope you enjoy it as well.

IA quote of the day!

A good friend sent this quote to me today and while humorous, it does sum up the issues faced with Information Security & Information Assurance.

"On one hand, the safety of information and information systems must be protected, while the administration and procedures for doing so must be kept reasonable so that information assurance does not evolve into an unsupportable self-licking ice cream cone of manpower and systems requirements."

I do not know who to attribute this to, but they hit the nail on the head.

GJB!

CrashOnAuditFail – Windows Server 2003

A little background.  My coworker and I maintain a business critical intranet web server for about 220 users in our company, as well as other jobs and responsibilities from time to time.  We are also the help desk for the app and most problems in general.

We had just finished eating our lunch when the phones light up with what at first seemed to be a typical network issue.  We have a few trusted users that seem to have a bit more insight than others so we went down stairs to their locations and checked the normal connectivity issues that are the most likely culprits.  This time was different, we (the admins) could still log in, but users got a 404 Error.  After checking several different work stations, we went back to the server.  We checked the System log and there wasn’t much info to be found.  Just that the server had unexpectedly restarted.



That wasn’t much help so we looked in the Security log and found this error.



The very limited info provided here proved to be just enough.
It seems that when you have auditing turned on and have set the Security Log to ‘Do Not Overwrite events’ and the log fills up, it will cause the sever to restart. 



That in itself isn’t that surprising, it’s the fact that when it restarts because the Security log is full, it only allows administrators to log in.   I understand why this happens, after all if it can’t perform auditing on the users' activities, why should it let them access the server.

We all know that Google knows everything, right?  The secret is asking the right question.  This is where a more verbose log error would have come in handy.   We eventually found the answer here. The answer was provided by Backlund. 

The key to this is that when the server restarted it made a registry change and didn’t let us know via a message of some sort. 
So open up Regedit and navigate to the following key.

HKLM\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa
in the CrashOnAuditFail key the value is 2.

Change the value to either 1 or 0 and restart the machine.

Everything should return to normal.  We hope that this can help someone, I wish that I had known about this before this bit of excitement.  While we knew that this wasn’t a résumé updating event, it was still stressful.

Amazon Connected Home Solutions - Streaming Music

Amazon has thought this out for us.  They have made several videos that address some of the more common alternatives to help you achieve whole house music.  On this page you will find several videos just related to streaming music.

In most cases you will need a network of some type, be it hard wired or wireless.  Amazon has thought this out as well with their video series Networking 101.  Once your network is up and running, they have broken whole home music into three options.

Option One - Whole-Home Systems

Whole-home systems transmit audio from a central location (such as your computer) to a plethora of amplified possibilities: a home theater stereo, powered speakers, an HDTV, and more. The audio that is being served up through your home can either be the digital audio files stored on your computer's hard drive or audio streamed from an Internet radio station.
> Shop whole-home systems

Option Two - Wi-Fi Radios

Wi-Fi radios stream content from Internet radio stations, which requires an Internet connection. As the name suggests, a Wi-Fi radio can wirelessly connect to the Internet (the source) over your home's wireless network router (the transmitter), and it acts as the direct receiver. It doesn't require connection to your computer, only to your network router.
While Wi-Fi radios don't require a connection to your computer, some offer the capability of streaming stored digital audio files (such as MP3s) from your computer's hard drive. Also, some Wi-Fi radios offer a wired Ethernet option as a feature.
> Shop Wi-Fi radio's

Option Three - iPod Streaming Solutions

Apple iPod-centric solutions provide an easy way for you to stream music from your iPod or iPhone to wireless speakers or receivers throughout your home. Many iPod streaming products can operate independently of a home network, so if that's an option you're interested in, be sure and read more on product detail pages.
> Shop IPod Streaming solutions

Apple Airport Express

The Apple Airport Express is a compact wireless base station that acts as a receiver to audio transmitted over Wi-Fi from a computer music source running the Apple iTunes software. The Airport Express connects to an amplified speaker via an integrated 3.5mm audio jack output.
Music sharing is just one function of the Airport Express, which can also be used as a standalone Wi-Fi router (great using while traveling), extending the range of your main Wi-Fi router, or providing access to a printer (via its USB port) to a wireless network.

> Learn more about the Apple Airport Express

Android 2.2 - Where is the Alarm Clock?

     Like many happy owners of a phone running Google's Android operating system, I was quite happy to receive the recent upgrade to Android version 2.2 (Froyo).  The new interface is easier to navigate and, once you get used to it, faster, too.

    There are a couple of things about the latest release of Android that are puzzling, or at least were initially.  My next couple of posts will address a few of these items, along with some of the things I like about the upgraded OS running on my Motorola Droid.

    The first thing I noticed (and was puzzled by) was the settings area for the alarm clock seemed to be missing.  Where is my alarm clock?  I was fumbling with my Droid late at night knowing I desperately needed to find the settings area in order to enable an early wake-up for the next morning (which wasn't very far off).  I struggled to wrap my tired brain around why I couldn't see the icon right at the top of the applications area where I had accessed it so many times before.  Finally, after some searching, I found the alarm settings are now part of the Clock settings.  From your applications area click on the "Clock" icon.  You'll see the alarm clock icon located at the bottom left of your screen (it's the same image as before - little clock with bells on top).  The interface remains essentially the same once you're into it, only the way in which you access it has changed.

     So, that's where your alarm clock settings went.  Hope this helps you wake up on time.

Cannot start Microsoft Office Outlook. Unable to open the Outlook window. (A solution to a frustrating problem)

As I'm sure you're all aware, every Microsoft error message is helpful, complete, and crystal clear, right? Well, maybe not. My most recent adventure with an error message told me something I already knew, but nothing more. Here's the deal.

I had a short power outage this evening at my house wherein I learned just how overdue I am to replace the battery in my uninterpretable power supply (UPS). My Dell XPS 410 went "lights-out" right in the middle of installing a new application. Outlook 2007 wasn't even open, although I had only closed it seconds earlier (the process may have still be running). Upon restarting the computer and attempting to open Outlook I was faced with the following error:

This error message displayed each time I attempted to open Outlook 2007 on my Windows Vista machine.

After a couple of restarts and some basic troubleshooting I was beginning to get frustrated.  Google searches didn't seem to help much initially, as most of the results referenced an issue when using Windows XP and attempting to open Outlook in Win95/ME compatibility mode.  I'm running a 32 bit version of Windows Vista Ultimate and I most certainly am not running Outlook in in compatibility mode (who would run anything in 95/ME compatibility mode, anyway?).

A bit more searching and pulling together suggestions from a few different forums on the Internet led me to a very simple solution.  Open Outlook from the 'Start' or 'Start>Run' dialog box as follows:

Outlook.exe /resetnavpane

Outlook should start up with no errors.  I hope this helps someone and prevents the dreaded reinstall of Office (which was, in my mind, the next logical solution to this issue).

USB CAC reader - OWA from home

CAC Card Reader:

As Jeff mentioned in a previous post, having a USB reader for your DoD Common Access Card (CAC) can be very helpful if you travel or work from home. Even if you're just trying to keep your inbox from filling up while you're on vacation, having one of these handy little devices is essential for accessing your Outlook Web Access (OWA) email while you're away from the office. If you're like me and don't like spending money on anything you don't have to spend it on, keep reading...things just got cheaper. The CAC reader recommended in the previous post has been drastically reduced in price. They're currently going for about $10 LESS than they were just a couple of months ago. (Just under $15 is the current price). Check out the CAC reader and Jeff's post from January. Don't forget, every organization has different rules on the use of OWA and accessing DoD networks from home (or on the road), so check with your local Information Assurance Manager or Network Security section before you do anything.

Checking your email via Outlook Web Access (OWA) using your DoD CAC Card

This post can't provide all the details on how to do check your email with your DoD CAC Card because it varies by agency. Please remember that most agencies have rules and regulations regarding what it takes to access your email via OWA, so be sure to check with your Information Assurance section. This is intended to provide a high level overview of the steps necessary.

Training:

Most agencies will have mandatory or at the very least, recommended training.  The training should address the importance of dealing with personally identifiable information (PII) and other sensitive information that could be accessed via your OWA web mail. It should  also speak to your responsibilities when using OWA. These responsibilities run the gamut from ensuring that your computer is not filled with viruses and other types of malware to the proper way to end your OWA session in order to be safe. This cannot be overstated! Read it, know it. Most will also have user guides on how to use OWA.

Anti-Virus Software:

There is no reason for a DoD employee to not have valid anti-virus protection on your home computer. Especially since the DoD has free anti-virus software for home use. In fact if you plan on using OWA it would be negligent to not have a legitimate updated AV product installed...

“The DoD Antivirus Software License Agreement with McAfee and Symantec allows active DoD employees to utilize the antivirus software for home use. Home use of the antivirus products will not only protect personal PCs at home, but will also potentially lessen the threat of employees bringing malicious logic into work and compromising DoD networks. Contractors are excluded from using the software at home or on any other system not belonging to the DoD.

Note: You will NOT be able to download software if your domain is not a *.mil domain.

No technical support is provided for home users. If you have questions about the software, please contact the vendors directly for support. “

Software can be downloaded from the following site: (please remember that you have to download this software from a computer on a .mil domain.) https://www.jtfgno.mil/antivirus/antivirus_homeuse.htm

CAC Card Reader:

This is generally not provided by the DoD. You will most likely have to  purchase one if you want to use OWA. You can get an entire keyboard that has a CAC reader built-in, but that is rather bulky, especially if you travel with a laptop. I recommend buying a USB CAC reader . I have purchased this one and it works fine. Although I suggest that you plug it in for first use and let Windows download the newest drivers for it prior to first OWA use. It costs about $24 from Amazon.






Middleware:

This is the software that allows you to use your CAC card with the CAC Card Reader to check OWA.  Most agencies will have a link that you can download this from.  Check with your Information Assurance section to determine how to download the software. Most DoD agencies are using ActivClient. The most recent version is 6.2; this will work for both 32 and 64 bit computers.

We are not associated with any DoD agency.

Samsung New PC Studio and Microsoft Windows 7

Well there is never a dull moment in the life of a techie, and Christmas is certainly no exception. This year we got our daughter a new cell phone, the Samsung Mythic a897 Phone (AT&T). It came with an installation CD-ROM and a data cable. So I set about attempting to install Samsung’s New PC Studio on my daughter’s laptop that is running Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium. It failed!

From the error messages displayed, it was failing to install the drivers for the phone. So after searching both Samsung’s site and AT&T’s site for Windows 7 specific drivers, I couldn't find any that looked trustworthy.

I had to make Windows 7 run the software while essentially fooling the software into believing that it wasn’t being installed on Microsoft’s newest operating system.

The first thing I did was go to the Samsung Mythic website and get the latest version of the software.

Once I had the new version of the software downloaded, I right clicked on the file to get the context menu and clicked on 'Troubleshoot Compatibility'.

Then I selected the 'Troubleshoot program' link.

Here is where you specify that the program worked with an earlier version of Windows.

I chose Windows Vista (Service Pack 2) and clicked next.

Here is where you have to pay attention.  Click on the 'Start the program...' button.  This will start the install of the Samsung New PC Studio software .  Allow the software to finish installing before returning to this dialog box.  Once the software has fully installed, then click the 'Next' button.

That will bring up the following dialog box.  Click on the 'Yes, save these settings for this program' button.  This way if you ever need to uninstall and reinstall the program, you will not have to deal with the incompatibility issues since this will save the settings needed to allow this software to run on your PC.

Finally enjoy your new phone and its software.

Pay Attention to Changes to Facebook Privacy Settings

Many of our customers and readers are undoubtedly users of social networking sites like MySpace, Twitter, and Facebook. I'd like to remind our friends and readers of the importance of actually understanding some recent changes to the privacy settings in Facebook. If you simply clicked "Next...Next...Finish" and "I Agree" when this week's notice popped up in Facebook, you should read on.

Facebook introduced changes in their privacy settings this week under the guise of making these settings more customizable and granular for their users. I tend to think there are other reasons, but we'll leave that discussion to the dozens of other blogs and media outlets that are beating that drum this week. My focus in this posting is simply to make Facebook users (current and future) aware that by default there is very little privacy when using Facebook.

First, let's talk about what kinds of data you might have within your Facebook account.

First Name
Last Name
Phone Number
City of Residence (this could also be the city in which you were born)
State of Residence (this could also be the state in which you were born)
Birthdate
Employer/School
Sex
Religious views
Political views
Email address
Photos of you
Videos of you
Your daily activities and/or geographic location (depending on how much you offer in your status updates)
Job title
Relationship status (and the name of your significant other, if applicable)
Favorite movies, TV shows, music, books, etc
etc.
etc.
etc.

Now that you see the list above all in one place, doesn't seem like an excessive amount of information to be giving away? It does to me. I can't see why there is a legitimate need to share this amount of information with so many people. But then I guess that depends on your personal thoughts on the subject and, as we'll see later in this post, how you have your privacy settings configured on Facebook.

Who sees this stuff? That also depends on how you have your Facebook privacy settings configured. But first and foremost you should understand that Facebook's default and recommended settings let the whole world see this information. Keep in mind, Facebook isn't just an online community of your peers and friends. It's also a treasure trove of information for those seeking to steal your identity or tailor their advertising to you. Or to send you spam. Or to steal your identity. Did I mention identity theft?

Who has an interest in this kind of information? Identity thieves. Advertisers. Spammers. Your ex-girlfriend/boyfriend stalker. The guy across town who wants your new LCD TV and would like to know when you're out of town (remember, you told him you were in Cancun?). Your employer (you know, to see what you're REALLY doing when you call in sick).

Alright, so I've scared a few of you, open the eyes of some of you, and lost the rest of you. Well pay attention, the good stuff is up next. Let's take a good look at the settings that Facebook "recommends" that you accept.

Click on Settings at the top of the Facebook page and then select Privacy Settings and you'll see a page like this:

The first area to consider is the Profile Information section. This will show you the details of all the things you're sharing, and with whom. Things like birthday, relationship status, and employer can be found here. I suggest setting all of them to Only Friends. You can even set them to Only Me or to specific users by selecting the Customize option.

The Contact Information section allows you to specify who can view your phone number, email addresses, website url, IM screen names, etc. These settings can also be set to be available to a many or as few people as you like, but I suggest that they be restricted to Only Friends at a minimum.

The next section is one that I think is widely overlooked. The Applications and Websites area is one that can protect or expose a ton of your personal information. In some cases, this exposure can take place without your knowledge or participation.

For starters, click on the Learn More button next to the What You Share section. Read it. Understand it. Please don't take it lightly. When you use applications in Facebook, you are agreeing to let the developers of those applications have access to your personal information to do with it whatever they wish. Photos, personal data, email addresses, birthdates, children's names, etc. All of these things (and more) are surrendered when you use a third party application within Facebook. The What You Share section will help you understand this. Read it. Understand it. Did I mention identity theft? Yeah, see, you have no idea who wrote those applications you're using. Quizzes? Games? Send a friend a drink or a gift? Yeah, those are the applications I'm talking about. You have no idea who wrote them, why they wrote them, and what parts of your personal data they're taking for their own use (or to sell to someone else).

Another good place to keep an eye on is the What Your Friends Can Share About You. Click on the Edit Settings button for this section and find all the ways (and there are many) that someone you're friends with on Facebook can agree to give away YOUR personal data. That's right, you don't even have to give away your own personal information. An unsuspecting friend of yours can do it for you, saving you the trouble. Nice, huh? Do yourself a big favor...go to this section and un-check every box you see. There is no reason that any of your friends' activities should result in the exposure of your personal information. Can you say identity theft?

The last two sections of the Applications and Websites area will allow you to view and edit applications you have blocked or edit which invitations you have previously chosen to ignore. These areas are pretty self explanatory (by now you're getting pretty good at this stuff anyway, huh?).

So, are you a little more paranoid than you were at the beginning of this post? Good, then my work is done here. Remember, privacy is a right that must be guarded and protected. Don't give away personal information unless it is absolutely necessary. And when it comes to Facebook, it's never necessary.

XP Backup Utility from Connected Solutions

Sometimes simplicity is the order of the day. We’ve all seen complex backup solutions for use in Windows. They can be expensive, cumbersome, and time consuming to setup. And then there’s Microsoft’s answer, the “Backup Utility”. This disaster has, in the past, left users scratching their heads for more reasons than one. Not only is the built-in Windows Backup Utility a pain to use, it’s format has changed from one version of Windows to the next, making it difficult for the average user to restore from a backup created using a previous version of Windows.

So you’re cheap and lazy, but realize you still need to backup some of your most valuable files. All that clutter you have on your desktop that you keep telling yourself to organize. Those pictures you’ve been meaning to make copies of before your next life-altering hard drive failure. And then there’s the stuff you never think about until you don’t have it. When’s the last time you backed up your Internet Explorer favorites? Yeah, that’s what I thought. We’re all guilty of putting these things off. So what should you do about it? Connected Solutions to the rescue!

With a little help from Simon Sheppard’s website (http://ss64.com/nt) we’ve developed a simple backup solution. This is nothing more than a batch file which will prompt you for the drive letter of your backup device and then make copies (uncompressed) of “My Documents”, “Favorites”, and “Desktop” of the current user to that backup device. USB Thumb drive? No problem. Firewire external hard drive? No problem. Network storage device? No problem. Anything that has a drive letter will work (assuming sufficient storage space is available on the target device.) This utility will create a folder on the target drive called “Backup”. Within that folder it will create a subfolder for each backup event and name the individual folders based on date, time, and username. For example, “2009-11-20-0946-BillyBob.Jones” (without the quotes) would be the name of the folder created when BillyBob Jones’ backup ran on November 20th 2009 at 9:46AM. Pretty simple, huh?

Currently this is only available for Windows XP (and it may work on Windows 2000, too, but we haven’t tested it). In the near future we plan to create a version for use with Vista and Windows 7.

REM Backup utility developed by Connected Solutions (www.Solutions29.com) 11/04/2009

@echo off
echo.
echo.
echo This backup utility will make a copy of the following folders on the backup drive of your choice:
echo My Documents
echo Favorites
echo Desktop

echo Default location PST files (MS Outlook)
echo.
echo To ensure a successful backup all open programs must be closed now...
echo.
echo.
Pause
FOR /F "TOKENS=1* DELIMS= " %%A IN ('DATE/T') DO SET CDATE=%%B
FOR /F "TOKENS=1,2 eol=/ DELIMS=/ " %%A IN ('DATE/T') DO SET mm=%%B
FOR /F "TOKENS=1,2 DELIMS=/ eol=/" %%A IN ('echo %CDATE%') DO SET dd=%%B
FOR /F "TOKENS=2,3 DELIMS=/ " %%A IN ('echo %CDATE%') DO SET yyyy=%%B

REM The following code was found on Simon Sheppard's website, http://ss64.com/nt/
SETLOCAL
For /f "tokens=1-3 delims=1234567890 " %%a in ("%time%") Do set "delims=%%a%%b%%c"
For /f "tokens=1-4 delims=%delims%" %%G in ("%time%") Do (
Set _hh=%%G
Set _min=%%H
Set _ss=%%I
Set _ms=%%J
)
:: Strip any leading spaces
Set _hh=%_hh: =%

:: Ensure the hours have a leading zero
if 1%_hh% LSS 20 Set _hh=0%_hh%

Echo The time is: %_hh%:%_min%:%_ss%
ENDLOCAL&Set _time=%_hh%%_min%
REM End of code found on Simon Sheppard's website, http://ss64.com/nt/

SET /P TargetDriveLetter=Enter the drive letter of your backup device:
SET date=%date:~10,4%_%date:~4,2%_%date:~7,2%_%_time%_%UserName%
md %TargetDriveLetter%:\Backup\%date%
xcopy "%UserProfile%\Desktop\*.*" "%TargetDriveLetter%:\Backup\%date%\Desktop\*.*" /e
xcopy "%UserProfile%\Favori~1\*.*" "%TargetDriveLetter%:\Backup\%date%\Favorites\*.*" /e
xcopy "%UserProfile%\MyDocu~1\*.*" "%TargetDriveLetter%:\Backup\%date%\My Documents\*.*" /e
xcopy "%UserProfile%\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook\*.*" "%TargetDriveLetter%:\Backup\%date%\OutLook Files\*.*" /e
echo.
echo.
echo Your backup is complete
echo Your backup location is: %TargetDriveLetter%:\Backup\%date%
echo.
echo This utility developed by Connected Solutions (www.Solutions29.com)
pause

Feel free to copy the code above into a batch file or just download a zipped one from here.

If you would like to modify this utility please leave all credits and comments in place. Hey, it's free, don't act like you have to steal it!

Risk Analysis from a CISSP's view point.

One of the aspects of being a CISSP is understanding risk analysis and risk management. Below we have provided a simple example of risk analysis.

Risk Analysis Example

Remember we are using a fictional set of circumstances to illustrate this example.

You are a CISSP working for a nationwide auto parts recycler that is headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee. The warehouse at this location is located at 21 feet above normal Mississippi River level. Research tells us that the river level will flood to 30 feet above normal river level once every 10 years.

Your warehouse consists of three levels of shelving starting at the ground level with shelves separated by a height of 10 feet. The inventory value of the entire warehouse is $10 million dollars. The total value of product on the ground level is approximately $3 million dollars. Research has shown that the cost to replace the all product on the ground level as well as cleanup, maintenance, and lost business will be 40% of inventory value.

Flood insurance on this warehouse would cost $50,000 per year with $10,000 deductible per occurrence.


AV: Asset Value.  For us this will be the value of the inventory or $10 million dollars.

EF: Exposure Factor.  This is expressed as a percentage. Based on the scenario, this is 40%.

SLE: Single Loss Expectancy. Every time a flood occurs, you can expect that it will cost your business 40% of inventory value ($10 million dollars) or an SLE of $4 million. This is accomplished with the following equation.   SLE = AV ($) * EF (%) or 10,000,000 x 0.40 = 4,000,000

ARO: Annual rate of occurrence. Since the event that we are considering purchasing insurance for (river flooding) only occurs once per ten years, we get 1/10 or an ARO of 0.1

ALE: Annualized Loss Expectancy. What is your annual cost of an every 10 year event?
If we use the equation ALE = SLE x ARO ,we get $4,000,000 x .1 for an ALE of $400,000.

Would you recommend the insurance to management? Lets do the quick math on this to see if would be a good idea.

Insurance costs $50,000 per year for 10 years equals $500,000 plus an additional $10,000 for the deductible. This would make $510,000 every ten years.

We hope that you liked and more importantly understood what the example provided.

As always, if you have any questions for us please let us know.

PC Security Recommendations

There are many choices for personal computer security, below are some items that we have used to keep our computers clean, secure, and running smoothly. They are all free and will provide, at the very least, a basic level of protection.

At a bare minimum, your computer should have an anti-virus and firewall application on it. Remember that you should always keep your computer up to date on service packs, hot fixes, patches, anti-virus, and firewall definitions in order to ensure that it remains as secure as possible.

If you have any questions on the items we have recommended, please feel free to send us an email.

Disclaimer: Due to the nearly unlimited possible combinations of hardware and software, we cannot guarantee that these items will work for you. We do not receive any funding or kick backs for these recommendations.

Anti-Virus -

AVG Free Anti-Virus has been around for quite a while and has proven themselves to be trust worthy. This can be configured to download the most recent AV definitions automatically.

Spyware and Ad-ware Removal -

Ad-Aware Free has an excellent reputation in their respective field.

Spybot Search and Destroy is another great tool that in addition to removing unwanted spyware and adware from your pc, it can prevent it from being installed in the first place.

Firewall -

ZoneAlarm is another of those products that has an excellent reputation.

System Optimization, Privacy and Cleaning -

CCleaner is a tool that I use all the time. It is a very powerful application that helps keep my computer running well. One of the nice features with this one is that it can be set to check for
updates for itself.

Disk Defragmentation -

Defraggler has a funny name, but on occasion I have found that this would defragment a hard drive better that the built-in defragmenting tool. This tool can also be set to check for updates to itself.

File Recovery -

Recuva is another very handy tool when you have deleted a file and need it back. While it may not be able to recover all deleted files, it does an excellent job and is easy to use. This tool can also be set to check for updates to itself.

Even though the software listed above is free, if you find that it works well for you, please feel free to visit the manufacturers respective sites and make a donation to help keep the software free.